TheChek News Flow

The merger of two French payments companies will create a European rival to U.S. giants as mounting competition rewards scope and scale

Consumers can afford to ignore the payments sector—the often-concealed plumbing of commerce offline and increasingly online. Not so bankers and investors.

On Monday, France’s Worldline WLN -0.70% agreed to buy its local peer Ingenico ING -1.18% for a mix of shares and cash, valuing the company at €7.8 billion ($8.63 billion). The deal will create the fourth-largest payment services company globally, giving it the heft to compete with U.S. rivals like Fiserv, FIS and Global Payments. Ingenico’s shares rose 12%.

Consolidation in this maturing industry has further to run, and Worldline would like to do more than its fair share of it.

The latest deal follows Visa’s $5.3 billion purchase of Plaid, announced in January, and a rush of activity last year. There were nearly $195 billion worth of transactions involving a payments company in 2019, according to Dealogic, more than double the previous high in 2015.

The payments market has grown in recent years as commerce has moved online and onto mobile devices and people have become increasingly comfortable using nonbank financial apps and services. Global revenue amounted to $1.9 trillion in 2018, up 6% compared with the previous year, according to McKinsey data.

However, traditional processors face mounting competition from startups as well as big tech companies like Google and Apple. This limits revenue growth potential, leaving companies seeking to cut costs by building scale and retain customers by expanding their product offerings. These trends will likely continue to drive deal making in the sector.

Worldline offers a broad range of merchant services, such as account and card payments, as well as other financial services. Ingenico is a global leader in the devices merchants use for taking payments and has a strong e-commerce solution. It also gives its acquirer a presence in Germany, the Nordics and the U.S. The merger is expected to generate €250 million in savings over four years.

Worldline is paying around 15 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. This is reasonable—U.S. giant Fiserv paid roughly 12 times Ebitda for First Data and FIS paid a massive 23 times for Worldpay. It also helps that Worldline stock, which is funding 81% of the Ingenico takeover, is richly valued on 31 times prospective earnings-per-share, compared with 19 times for the target before the announcement.

In the half decade since it was spun out of European technology giant Atos, Worldline has made eight acquisitions. Its €2.3 billion purchase of SIX Group in 2018 was one of the early moves in the current consolidation round. It may soon be buying again: Chief Executive Gilles Grapinet said Monday’s deal leaves the group “uniquely positioned to further participate” in the deal wave.

Takeover activity is stuttering globally, but Worldline and its peers in the payments industry show no sign of losing their appetite.

The car maker’s outsize stock gains don’t match its fundamentals, but they do share troubling similarities with past episodes of inflated prices that ended in tears

Tesla TSLA 13.73% Inc.’s shares rose 14% Tuesday to $887.06. They have surged 56% in the past week and have nearly quadrupled since early October

Those outsize gains don’t match Tesla’s more modest fundamentals, which include annual losses. They do, however, resemble any number of other assets that have experienced prolonged bubbles, including shares of Qualcomm Inc. and other tech stocks of the dot-com era; oil in 2008; and bitcoin in 2017.

“I’m not saying this is the top,” said Peter Cecchini, the chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald. “I don’t have a target [price], or a view on where it goes from here. It just feels like other bubbles.”

Mr. Cecchini compared Tuesday’s global risk-on rally—during which the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged as much as 500 points—to a “bizarro world” in which everything is the opposite of what it should be. Tesla, though, is leading the pack. “The rise in Tesla shares are emblematic of the speculative mindset,” he said.

The latest leg of the rally follows Tesla’s quarterly report last week when the company posted record deliveries in the fourth quarter. A flurry of analysts also have helped fuel the stock’s rise by raising their price targets.

On one level Tesla appears to be the flavor of the day among retail investors. On the Robinhood app that lets people buy and sell stock on their phones, Tesla has logged the largest swing in new buyers on the app over the past three days.

The gains are proving to be a thorn in skeptics’ side. Despite some short-covering over the past few weeks, there is still some $14 billion in short interest against Tesla, making it the most shorted U.S.-traded company, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners. Short sellers borrow stocks and sell them, profiting if they are able to repurchase the shares at lower prices.

“The situation is a textbook short squeeze, albeit on an unprecedented scale,” said Matt Weller, a market researcher at Gain Capital. Last fall, short interest in the stock was about 25%. As the price went up, those traders were forced to sell their stock, which drove the price up. That forced others to sell, which further drove the price. “And so on,” Mr. Weller said.

Short interest is still around 13%, he said, so that dynamic may not be done playing out.

Tesla’s stock over the past few months resembles any number of other assets that traded at excesses, going all the way back to the South Sea Bubble of the 1720s.

There are hundreds of stocks that exploded in the dot-com era, though few illustrate the mania as well as Qualcomm. It was riding the wave of the first real explosion in mobile phones. Analysts crowed that Qualcomm’s chips would be “the technology of choice” for handset makers.

In 1999, the stock went from $5 to nearly $90, adjusted for stock splits. The company seemed to have no competitor. Then, the bubble burst, the economy turned sour, and competition showed up. Qualcomm at least survived the bubble. Plenty of companies didn’t.

After an extended slump, today its stock trades at about $88, virtually flat with its dot-com top.

Oil had its own bubble in 2008. Driven by a booming global economy, oil prices exploded in the mid-aughts. In the summer of 2008, it hit a record of $145. That price, though, strained companies and commuters everywhere. The already teetering economy cratered, and oil prices followed.

Perhaps no bubble was more a product of pure speculation than the bitcoin bubble of 2017. That year cryptocurrencies exploded into the popular consciousness. Few people understood how they worked; fewer had any practical use for them. Everybody wanted them. Bitcoin started the year trading under $1,000. By December 2017, it had jumped to nearly $20,000.

It didn’t last. None of them did.

If you are looking for a rational explanation, Mr. Cecchini said, it is possible to pull up a spreadsheet, put in all the numbers for Tesla or any of these assets, apply a function designed to calculate exponential expansions, and draw a chart. Or you can just see them for the speculative excesses they are, he said.

“You can explain it with math,” he said, “but you don’t need to explain it with math to know that it’s silly.”

HMRC’s letter says I might have to withhold tax from my rent

Since late 2018, I have rented a room in a flat-share from a landlord who was known to me and asked for rent to be paid in cash, which I agreed to.

I recently received a letter from HM Revenue & Customs, asking me about the tax status of my current landlord, which suggested I may have to withhold tax from my rental payments to ensure the correct amount is paid. Am I potentially liable if my current or previous landlord has not complied with HMRC and how should I respond to this letter?

Dawn Register, partner in tax dispute resolution at accountancy and business advisory firm BDO, says it sounds as if you have received a “nudge letter” from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). This is a batch letter sent to certain taxpayers as part of a HMRC campaign.

In this case, HMRC has identified and sent letters to tenants of properties owned by non-UK resident landlords. The letter reminds affected tenants of the rules under the Non-Resident Landlord (NRL) scheme. This is a new HMRC campaign. However, the NRL scheme dates back to April 1 1996.

You understood the letter correctly. If the landlord is non-UK resident and subject to the NRL scheme, you may need to deduct basic rate tax at 20 per cent from the rent. A non-resident landlord could be an individual, a company or trustees. Subject to exceptions, a tenant needs to deduct tax from the rent if the rent is not paid through a letting agent and more than £100 a week is paid to the overseas landlord or their UK representative, for example a friend or family member.

If the rent is paid to the letting agent — which in your case it is not — it is the letting agent’s responsibility to withhold the tax due. What constitutes a letting agent is broad and depends on the particular arrangement. In our experience, the tenant’s obligation to deduct basic rate tax is not widely known. The NRL scheme allows non-resident landlords to apply to HMRC to have their UK rent paid to them gross, but it is unlikely tenants will know whether this applies to them.

Tenants who are required to operate the NRL scheme must notify the Personal Tax International team at HMRC and account quarterly to HMRC Accounts Office, Shipley, for any tax due under the scheme. Where they are required to account for tax they should provide their non-resident landlords with a certificate of tax liability each year, plus complete an annual information return.

It may sound surprising but, where applicable, the withholding of tax from rent due to non-UK resident landlords is the tenant’s responsibility. HMRC’s manual, however, suggests that affected tenants “have the right to recover from the landlord any tax they have to pay under the scheme where they did not deduct it from their rent or other money owing”.

It seems plausible that many tenants will not know the answers to certain details they are being asked to provide in respect of their landlord. The Chartered Institute of Taxation has advised recipients not to ignore such letters and I agree. Individuals receiving the letter should engage with HMRC and complete the questionnaire as best they can. If confused or unsure, specialist advice should be sought.

James Parratt, solicitor at Thomson Snell & Passmore, says this letter is part of HMRC’s information gathering process to help them establish whether or not your landlord is a “non-resident landlord” — in other words, their usual place of abode is outside the UK. This is distinct from being a resident in the UK for tax purposes. A non-resident landlord can be an individual, company or trustees.

The non-resident landlord scheme requires income tax at the basic rate to be deducted from rental payments to the non-resident landlords of UK property. This tax is to be accounted to HMRC.

If your landlord is a non-resident, you are obliged to deduct tax from the rental payments you make to your landlord, and account for this to HMRC. If you pay more than £100 per week and your landlord lives abroad, you must register with HRMC and deduct tax from your rent, assuming you have not already been notified by HMRC of the scheme. Registration with HMRC may also be necessary if you pay rent to a UK representative of your landlord.

Do not worry — these deductions do not mean you are paying more; you are simply withholding the tax calculation from your landlord and accounting for this to HMRC instead.

While there is no obligation to respond to the letter and questionnaire, doing so will enable HMRC to help you if further action is required, or to tell you if no further action is required. If you do not respond, HMRC is likely to register the property for a tax charge and issue a tax determination to the landlord.

You are not obliged to inform your landlord that you have received the letter from HMRC. But if the tax authority determines that your landlord is a non-resident, you should inform your landlord that you are required to deduct tax from the rental payments.

The reduction in rent payable to your landlord will not affect your rights in respect of your tenancy agreement, nor give your landlord a new right to seek possession of their property. Your landlord will have no incentive to find another tenant as a new tenant will also be obliged to deduct tax from their rent payments if HMRC determines your landlord to be a non-resident landlord.

I suggest you engage with HMRC, completing the questions as far as possible, and do not ignore it. When responding, you should answer the questions to the best of your knowledge. HMRC suggests tenants should reply “not known” if they do not know the information for the specific questions.

You should not be overly concerned about any references to penalties in the letter. HMRC will not look to charge a penalty if mistakes have been made in the completion of the form attached to the letter. Penalties are only relevant where the tenant has chosen not to deduct tax at the right time or neglected to do so.

HMRC has a dedicated helpline to answer any queries you may have and this may also be of assistance when preparing your response to them. The number to call is 03000 516 644.

An FT investigation into the complex dealings of the group that helped out the Kushners by leasing 666 Fifth Avenue

On a busy stretch of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue a few blocks south of Trump Tower, a decaying skyscraper stands as a rebuke to the $1.8bn deal that Jared Kushner helped his family sign a decade ago, at the age of 26. It was the most expensive New York office purchase in history, and for a time it looked likely to sink the Kushners’ business. Steve Roth, the billionaire who co-owned 666 Fifth Avenue, lamented it would “be worth a lot more if it was just dirt”.

By 2016, Mr Kushner was searching for a way out. Destined for a top job in his father-in-law’s White House the following year, he found plenty of people to talk to, but no one who was buying. Discussions with Anbang, the Chinese insurance group, came to a halt some time before its flashy chairman Wu Xiaohui landed in a Chinese jail. The Qatari finance minister Ali Shareef al-Emadi met Mr Kushner’s father in 2017, although Charles Kushner has said he took the appointment “out of respect” and stressed there could be no deal.

Then, with months to go before $1.2bn of mortgage payments fell due in February 2019, the Kushners won a reprieve — one that looked nothing like a favour from a foreign state. It was an investment from financial group Brookfield, which leased the building whole, paying nearly a century of rent in advance.

Brookfield is a name that towers over the global investment industry, even if it receives less scrutiny or attention than rivals of similar size. The name adorns the skyscrapers of London’s Canary Wharf, Berlin’s reconstructed Potsdamer Platz and New York, where Brookfield dwarfs every other commercial landlord. And it reaches far beyond real estate; Brookfield’s eclectic investment portfolio includes 14,500km of railways and toll roads, about one-seventh of France’s mobile phone masts, and Westinghouse, the formerly bankrupt nuclear reactor maker.

Originally an outgrowth of the Bronfman liquor dynasty, the group today attracts money from ordinary stock market investors, sophisticated public pension systems and sovereign states including Qatar, the gas-rich Middle East kingdom whose finance minister the elder Mr Kushner appeared to spurn. “Our reputation is that if you have a large transaction, if you have a difficult transaction . . . go to Brookfield,” says chief executive Bruce Flatt.

Yet what exactly Brookfield is, and how it operates, is maddeningly difficult to ascertain. 

To unpack the Canadian group’s accounts is to discover not so much a company as a giant, triangular jigsaw board that spreads across the world and covers assets worth $500bn. The pieces are hundreds of corporate entities, all locked together by elaborate contracts, which give 40 people at the top the right to rule huge sections of the puzzle almost as if it were their own. 

Those insiders wield such power that the companies below them could face risks similar to those of “pyramid control companies”, according to a draft investor disclosure that Brookfield filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013. (The final version warned instead of risks “associated with a separation of economic interest from control”.)

Over the past six months, the Financial Times has asked current and former executives, and others who know Brookfield well, to shine a light on this empire. Some refused to talk; others requested anonymity, citing non-disclosure agreements or fear of reprisals. 

Even as they spoke, the Toronto-based group pushed further into US finance, completing an acquisition of Oaktree Capital Management, the private equity firm founded by Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh. Yet in interviews, securities filings, litigation records and other documents, a picture emerges of an investment group that defies convention: highly secretive, seemingly obsessed with control and susceptible to family squabbles that have few parallels among its Wall Street peers.

Brookfield began with a $15m inheritance and a family feud. The money came from Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Seagram Company, who made a fortune out of alcohol just as America turned to prohibition. The feud involved his two nephews, Peter and Edward, and it began in 1952, when Samuel locked the young brothers out of Seagram’s offices and forced them to sell their shares for less than they were worth. The key actor, though, was accountant Jack Cockwell, who teamed up with the two brothers, and whose shrewd dealmaking helped build a behemoth.

A turning point for the Bronfmans came with the acquisition, following a messy takeover battle, of Brascan, the former owner of a Brazilian electrical utility, which was sitting on a pile of cash after the military dictatorship nationalised its biggest asset. In Mr Cockwell’s hands, the New York-listed Brascan became a platform for controlling just about anything: breweries and sports teams, forests and mines, real estate brokers and investment banks.

By the 1980s, Edward and Peter Bronfman were two of Canada’s richest men. They also presided over one of the world’s most complicated corporate structures, with booty from their acquisition spree split between dozens of public companies and hundreds more private vehicles. Edward sold his shares in 1989, retired and took up philanthropy. Peter stayed on to orchestrate the deal that would create Brookfield. 

At the centre of the transaction was Pagurian Corporation, which was controlled by executives including Mr Cockwell and shared its name with a species of crab that, having no shell of its own, steals the exteriors of dead snails.

In 1993, with real estate values falling and Brascan selling off assets, Peter Bronfman sought an exit. Pagurian ended up with a majority stake in the Bronfman empire, while Peter Bronfman, whose fortune had seeded the vast enterprise, reportedly received about $25m. 

Following a series of name changes, mergers and share-swaps that brought together many of the former Bronfman companies, Pagurian is today known as Brookfield Asset Management. Its leaders have soared in wealth and influence since the departure of the Bronfmans. Mr Cockwell still serves on Brookfield’s board, and holds shares worth about $1.6bn. Mr Flatt, who became chief executive in 2002, has accumulated stock worth another $2.5bn.

Their position seems secure; BAM shareholders have earned compound annual returns of 18 per cent over the past 25 years. And even if that performance should falter, the two men would be difficult to dislodge, for they own a big piece of a lesser-known company named Partners Limited, which has the power to override the votes of every other Brookfield shareholder.

“In form, Partners is a corporation,” explains a two-page memo sent in the mid-1990s to a handful of Peter Bronfman’s employees, and seen by the FT. In substance, it sounds like something else entirely: a routine of “weekly luncheon meetings” that comes with serious financial perks.

Conceived as a way for executives to “become a financial partner with Mr Bronfman”, Partners today wields enormous power over Brookfield. Its 40 members own about one-fifth of BAM, but have enough votes to appoint nine of its 16 directors. A dual-class structure means they can also overrule shareholder motions even if they are supported by outside shareholders. 

The identity of some of those “partners” is not clear. Brookfield named only a handful in its 2018 public filings, although all are said to be current or former Brookfield executives. (Among them are Mr Flatt and Mr Cockwell, who own half of Partners between them, according to Brookfield; another five executives were identified who hold about another third.) Peter Bronfman’s widow Lynda Hamilton, who later married Mr Cockwell, has been named as a shareholder in previous years, as has Mr Cockwell’s brother Ian, who once ran Brookfield’s housebuilding division. (Brookfield says neither currently own Partners shares.)

Mr Flatt likens the system to Goldman Sachs’ former partnership, with insiders promising to forego most outside business interests, and departing executives ceding their shares to younger partners in exchange for payments stretching over 20 years. 

It is not always harmonious. In one puzzling dispute, a departing executive filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Mr Flatt’s brother Gordon, who has no apparent connection to Brookfield. (The litigation took place in Bermuda and few details are public, but Gordon Flatt denied the allegations against him, and a knowledgeable person said the case had been settled.)

Yet despite an elaborate structure that vests power in insiders, Mr Flatt insists that Brookfield is run by an independent board. “That partnership does nothing,” he says. “We never have meetings, we don’t vote on anything, there is nothing to do. But it has those rights, and they’re very important.”

Two days before Brookfield bought the Kushners’ office tower last August, an executive named Brian Kingston dialled into a conference call with analysts and casually disclosed that his team had just closed a $1.4bn transaction involving a different set of New York properties. Brookfield was the seller. It was also the buyer.

More precisely, the buyer was BAM, which sits a few rows from the top of the Brookfield triangle, and is sometimes known as Brookfield for short. This was already unusual: when the Brookfield group buys an asset, the money usually comes from one of the investment funds it runs for outside investors. “BAM doesn’t do anything,” Mr Flatt confirms. “BAM never puts up any money, for anything. That’s why, if you’ve read any of our materials, we’re increasingly at the point where we generate way more cash than we need.”

But this time BAM was in fact putting up money, to buy a 28 per cent stake in a bunch of New York office towers. And it was doing more besides. The buildings were owned by Brookfield Property Partners, a separate Nasdaq-listed company that sits further down the triangle, trades under the ticker BPY and — confusingly — is also sometimes known as Brookfield for short. Because BPY does not employ any property specialists, it delegates tasks such as identifying assets to buy and sell to other parts of the Brookfield empire. As well as snapping up the New York office tower stakes, therefore, BAM was steering BPY to get rid of them.

“We very seldom sell between companies,” says Mr Flatt. (Brookfield says that “fiduciary responsibility sits at the centre of everything we do”.) The transaction was vetted by BPY’s independent governance committee, its full board and the board of BAM, Brookfield says, adding that all the directors received extensive information, and a fairness opinion from an independent adviser. BAM told investors in November 2018 that it planned to sell the property interests to outside investors “in the near term”, but more than a year later, it has yet to announce a buyer.

Even today, shareholders know little about why BPY wanted to sell 28 per cent of its core office portfolio for $1.4bn, or why BAM wanted to buy. The rationale was that BPY needed cash. “The only reason we did that,” Mr Flatt says of the office tower deal, was that “it [BPY] needed some extra capital. And this was an easy way to do it.”

The money was needed, Mr Flatt explains, to pay for a big wager on US malls — a sector that many investors have left for dead. BPY consummated the bet in August 2018 when it merged with retail landlord GGP, whose shareholders received cash payments worth $9.3bn. Yet that was also the month when some of BPY’s cash was committed to 666 Fifth Avenue, the office lease in midtown Manhattan that is still jangling nerves from Washington DC to Doha.

The Kushner deal was assembled from several pieces of the Brookfield empire. The lease was signed by a company named BSREP III Nero LLC, a possible allusion to the emperor who was blamed for the burning of Rome. That company is owned by a fund called BSREP III, which is managed by BAM and was, at the time, controlled by BPY — all of which placed the deal where global finance blends into geopolitics on the jigsaw.

The known links between Qatar and Brookfield all converge on the investment group’s listed property fund BPY. About one-tenth of the fund’s assets are tied up in skyscrapers in Canary Wharf and Manhattan that are co-owned by Qatar, but the connection goes further. Through a sovereign wealth fund, Doha is one of BPY’s biggest investors, holding $1.8bn worth of BPY preferred equity. The securities have a debtlike quality, and Qatar can force BAM to buy them back for $1.8bn over the next six years.

In theory, Qatar has significant influence over BPY. It is entitled to choose one person to sit on BPY’s board, and to receive confidential information that other investors never see. Brookfield says the kingdom has never exercised either of those rights. (The Qatar Investment Authority declined to comment.) Both sides have previously indicated that, when Brookfield was negotiating a $1.3bn lease on 666 Fifth Avenue, a building that Charles Kushner had discussed with the Qataris the previous year, the kingdom was not involved.

No matter who made the decision or knew about it, rescuing the Kushners strikes some real estate investors as ill-advised. “It was widely regarded as a very full price, in a midtown office market that’s challenging, in an asset that’s going to require substantial capex in order to make it leasable,” says a leading dealmaker. Brookfield takes such scepticism almost as a backhanded compliment. “We buy troubled, stressed, things,” says Mr Flatt. “We’re going to reskin the building, and we’re going to fill it up. It’s going to be amazing.”

In the public accounts of BPY, the listed property fund that received Qatari investment, 666 Fifth Avenue has already all but disappeared. Last January, BPY lost control of BSREP III, the private vehicle that owns the building, after reducing its stake to $1bn. New investors piled in, each taking a piece of the Kushner tower, and lifting the private fund’s firepower to $15bn.

That influx of cash has not made the tower’s ownership any more transparent. A handful of US pension funds have acknowledged their participation, but few other investors have been identified publicly. Knowledgeable people insist that no Qatari money is involved. Materials reviewed by the FT show that about $3bn of the total comes from sovereign governments, although they do not specify which ones, and $2bn of it from the Middle East, although the document does not say exactly where. 

Biggest French bank benefits from ‘sharp rebound’ in equities and fixed-income growth

BNP Paribas reported a surge in fourth-quarter net profit, as France’s biggest bank recovered from a blow caused by market disturbances a year earlier, but cut a key profitability target for 2020.

Fourth-quarter revenue jumped 11.5 per cent compared with the same period in 2018 to €11.3bn, while net income rose 28.2 per cent to €1.85bn in the three months to the end of December.

The lender’s investment and corporate banking division’s revenues increased 30 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier, buoyed by a “very sharp rebound” in equities trading and strong growth in its fixed income, currencies and commodities trading unit.

However, BNP said it expects a return on tangible equity of 10 per cent this year, down from previous expectations of 10.5 per cent.

Chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafé said the results confirmed “the strength of its diversified and integrated model”.

“BNP Paribas achieved a very good performance in 2019 thanks to its good business drive and the effects of its transformation.”

The results come a year after BNP suffered what it called “extreme market conditions” that hit trading revenues and its ambitions to become the European investment banking champion.

In response, France’s biggest bank by market capitalisation accelerated cost-cutting, shut its controversial proprietary trading unit and slashed its financial targets.

BNP said on Wednesday that its corporate and investment banking ranked number 3 in Europe, Middle East and Africa in the first nine months of 2019, making it the leading European player behind two US institutions.

Its common equity tier one ratio, a measure of balance sheet strength, was 12.1 per cent at the end of December, an increase of 10 basis points over the previous quarter.

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